30 August 2015

From the perspective of romantic love, men and women have many common interests, but also many conflicting interests. This tension is a source of excitement, pleasure and love, and also panic, pain and heartache. This is a game, a battle: Men and women are evolved to play. In this game: they are kings and queens, players and drama queens, and lovers and cheaters. In this battle: there are broken hearts, wounded souls, and destroyed spirits.

The conflicts start from the beginning of the process itself – who they find attractive and how they check out the opposite sex. As women and men are evolved to play different roles, they seek out different traits in their partners. As studies show: Men are most excited to see images of naked women, whereas women are most excited to see images of babies and mothers. Hence women have to seek out other venues like certain romantic novels to satisfy their fantasy. Though both men and women check out the opposite sex, men's tunnel vision makes it obvious, whereas women's peripheral vision makes it difficult to detect. Both men and women equally cheat their partners, though they may do it for different reasons.

Reproduction is at the core of life evolution. Hence every aspects of it including mate selection, mating, pair bonding (love), child birth and parent-child bonding are the most important aspects of our life – as coded in our genes and expressed in our body/brain/mind. When we succeed, it gives us the ultimate pleasure and great feeling; when we fail, it gives us the worst pain and miserable feeling. As women are evolved to play a major role in the reproduction process, accordingly their pleasure and pain (ups and downs) can be more than that of men. Hence women are often said to be more emotional.

If a man leaves a woman after their first mating, it might be devastating to her. She might feel like being used and something precious taken away from her. She is evolved to feel this way, as it might be a very costly mistake of her life – she might get pregnant and she has to raise her child on her own. Men not only have such a cost associated with this aspect, further it can be positive for the survival of their genes. Hence it may be difficult for men to naturally grasp this feelings of women. Men learn this later from the social experiences. Though women learn to soothe this feeling over the time, it is always present in women's psyche – in every mating and even after a long successful relationship. Women like to be reassured and comforted on a regular basis. The purpose of romance is rooted from this.

Though nature may not be fair, but certain balance cannot be avoided. Though the emotions of men maybe under-expressed (and often under-valued), they do have their own shares. After all, the Buddha - who went to extreme measures to understand our pain and suffering - was a man. Men pay a huge price as they are less experienced with handling their own emotions and women's style of emotional/psychological game. They are often just caught up by it in a shocking way – further trapped by lack of social support.

Being cheated on affects both genders in a heartbreaking way. If a man cheated on his woman, and he comes back to her sincerely, it may still be evolutionarily advantageous to her to accept him – whether she carries children of his or someone else or none. But if a woman cheated on her man, and she comes back to him, it is often evolutionarily harmful to him to accept her. Because a man cannot really know his children for sure. He has no other option but trust his woman. Hence he may find it much harder to forgive and accept her, and continue to suffer for a long time. This predicament of men – not able to know their children for sure – is imprinted in many of men's behaviors including trying to possess and control women. The oppression of women in our society maybe rooted from this insecurity of men.

P.S: This post is not meant to complain and criticize each other, but to understand each other, and perhaps to go beyond our insecurities and weaknesses. This is meant to provide some understanding, so we could accept this fundamental aspect of our life and not disheartened by it.